Project Summary
The aviation industry is responsible for around 8% of the UK's carbon emissions. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) has the potential to reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions by 70% compared to conventional jet fuel. National Gas are developing UK wide hydrogen and carbon dioxide backbones to enable wide-scale hydrogenuptake and carbon capture and storage. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are bothfeedstocks for the Power-to-liquid (PtL) process for producing SAF and othersustainable liquid fuels. This project will explore how hydrogen and carbonnetworks could support UK Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production and accelerate the aviation industry in moving towards Net Zero.
Innovation Justification
The links between UK gas networks and SAF production have not yet been investigated. The SAF Power-to-liquid process utilises hydrogen and carbon dioxide as feedstocks.
Project Union will build a hydrogen backbone for the UK, connecting production, storage and users, providing security of supply. A CCUS backbone will remove carbon emissions from industry and transport them offshore for storage, however, we believe considering industrial uses for carbon such as in SAF production would benefit consumers in the long run. It will enable Union and CCUS to not only decarbonise industry and power but also support the decarbonisation of transportation.
Relevant state of the art
In the UK, SAF is only produced on a small scale. However, the recent SAFMandate states the equivalent to ~10% (~1.5 billion litres) of jet fuel must be madefrom sustainable sources by 2030, with demonstrators coming online from 2026. In 2023, the first SAF was blended at 38% into the CEPs and Brussels Airport received the first SAF-blended fuel which was used for flights.
Beyond incremental innovation
The use of Carbon and Hydrogen networks for supplying SAF production has not previously been explored. The SIF programme will provide networks the capability to access a new market.
Readiness Levels
Current SAF Power to Liquid technology -- TRL 5-6.
SAF production links to our network TRL 2-3, After Beta, ~TRL 6-7.
IRL -- Current IRL-1 (no previous work). After Discovery, ~IRL-2. After Beta, ~ IRL-7.
Size and Scale
We have brought together key industry stakeholders to represent each part of the SAF supply chain (partners, working groups & advisory board) which supports the innovation challenge of whole system planning for faster asset role out. Each will feed into the project to increase the value the project provides, whilst keeping the core team small and offering value for money for the consumer.
BAU
The proposed innovation is novel with low readiness levels, therefore has riskassociated with the delivery. It is dependent on the development of a hydrogen and carbon network in the UK, which is currently being developed by NGT andindicated on the National Infrastructure Commission Report.
Counterfactuals
SAF production has strict environmental requirements meaning only green hydrogen can be used to realise environmental benefits. We aim to accelerate the large-scale production & offshore access of SAF across the UK, rather than having reliance on localised production of green hydrogen.
Impacts and Benefits
Pre-innovation baseline
Aviation accounted for 7% of UK emissions in 2018. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) has the potential to reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 70% compared to conventional jet fuel.
SAF is currently only being produced at small scale on one site in the UK. The recent SAF Mandate and Advanced Fuel Funds competition has announced the funding of five projects to build SAF plants between 2026 and 2028. The projects include a range of SAF production methods including waste gasification, alcohol tojet fuel and PtL. Where hydrogen is required for SAF production, this will be produced by electrolysis. Where carbon is required as a feedstock, it will be produced from gasification or Direct Air Capture.
National Gas Transmission (NGT) are creating a hydrogen backbone for the UK through Project Union, which is currently undergoing pre-FEED work. The secondNational Infrastructure Assessment by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has recommended that the government forms a plan for a carbontransmission network across the UK to transport and store at least 50 MtCO2. NGT has carried out feasibility work to understand how the existing transmissionsystem could be used to transport carbon and create a carbon network alongsideProject Union. We will determine the opportunity for connecting SAF facilities tohydrogen and carbon networks to accelerate SAF production.
Forecast benefits
The potential links between hydrogen and carbon networks and SAF production have not previously been explored. A Discovery project would bring together keyaviation and gas transmission and distribution stakeholders to identify these opportunities by assessing the current and projected SAF production landscape, determining the potential volumes and locations for SAF production in line with Project Union and a UK-wide carbon network, investigating the design of a network connection to SAF facilities considering the technical requirements, and developing the business case for this solution.
The Sustainable Aviation industry coalition reported that SAF use in the UK could deliver between 1.2 and 2.8 Mt of carbon emissions savings in 2035 and 26.4MtCO2 in 2050. However production is currently limited by the requirement to use electrolysis to produce hydrogen as well as point source CO2 limiting PtL production to 10s kT/year. Gas transmission and distribution networks are efficient ways to transport gases, and could couple large scale production of hydrogen and carbon to SAF (and other sustainable liquid fuels) production across the UK.
Impacts and benefits
Alternative Funding
This project was initially taken through the Strategic Innovation Fund Round 3 due to the proposed solution being novel and not previously explored. Both Net Zero gas networks and SAF production are in development stages, and interactions between them have not previously been explored. The SIF would have allowed the solution to be developed over a short period of time with the aim of demonstrating the solution and it’s benefits to the wider aviation industry in the UK and globally. Following the unsuccessful application to the Alpha phase, the project will be pursued outside of the SIF levering on alternative gas network innovation funds in combination with aviation/transport funding as a joint venture.
Benefits Progress
Indirect CO2 savings – the use of SAF in aviation is projected to account for nearly 40% of emissions savings in the aviation industry by 2050. This solution aimed to accelerate the deployment of SAF production in the UK by enabling access to low-cost high volume feedstock supplies via a network. This in turn could encourage more investment in “homegrown” SAF in the UK, avoiding imports from the USA for example, who are currently further ahead in terms of regulation and investment in SAF production. These imports would come with an emissions savings penalty compared to homegrown SAF.
Creation of new revenue streams – for gas networks, increased numbers of connections from new offtakers results in revenue generation through connection charges. Whilst gas networks never own, buy or sell gas in the network, the connection charges generate revenue for the networks. Hydrogen for transport has been explored previously, however hydrogen and CO2 as feedstocks for SAF production would be an entirely new revenue stream which would require development. Very rudimentary calculations suggest hydrogen demand from SAF could generate ~£60m in additional revenue for National Gas Transmission based on volumes required and simple revenue calculations based on today’s natural gas revenue.
New to market - products, processes and services – This project explored the design requirements for hydrogen and CO2 offtake sites (Above Ground Installations, AGIs). Hydrogen AGIs will be developed as part of Project Union so the outputs of this project will support that, although the specific application for SAF production will have some unique requirements. Carbon dioxide transmission offtakes are completely novel as the main function of the CO2 pipelines will be to transport the CO2 to offshore underground storage. The use of CO2 as a feedstock has not been considered and will need specific requirements which were being developed in this project. On the SAF production plant design, this project was investigating how plant design would change with gas network connections, with the potential for less plant and infrastructure requirements as feedstock generation would no longer be required, leading to lower CAPEX and OPEX for SAF production as well as faster development and deployment.
